A photographer could lose most of a $450,000 jury award because he didn’t establish that a business owner willfully infringed his copyrights by hiring a web developer who used unlicensed images, an appeals court ruled.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit April 16 reversed part of a jury verdict in favor of photographer Jim Erickson in his 2013 lawsuit against Kraig Rudinger Kast. Erickson failed to show Kast financially benefited from the infringement or went beyond negligence into willfulness, the appeals court said, remanding those issues to the lower court.
The decision highlights the importance of jury ...